What's Out There Weekend: Washington, D.C.

On September 25-26 in Washington, D.C., TCLF will host What's Out There Weekend, providing residents and visitors an opportunity to discover and explore 25 free, publicly accessible sites in the nation's capital. During the two days of What's Out There Weekend, TCLF will offer free tours by expert guides.

Explore the Featured Sites

Raising Awareness

Washington, D.C. has one of the nation’s great concentrations of designed landscapes – parks, gardens and public spaces – laid out by landscape architects or designers. It’s an unrivaled legacy that stretches back more than 200 years and includes Pierre L’Enfant’s plan for the city, Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.’s design for the U.S. Capitol grounds and Dan Kiley’s plaza at the National Gallery of Art. Throughout the weekend, expert guides will lead tours that shed new light on some of the city’s most iconic landscapes and introduce you to places you may not have known before. TCLF’s goal is to make visible these sites and their stories just like the capital city’s great buildings, monuments and memorials.

The What’s Out There Weekend initiative dovetails with the web-based What’s Out There (WOT), the first searchable database of the nation’s historic designed landscapes. Spanning more than two centuries of American landscape design, the database is searchable by name, locale, designer, type, and style. The richly-illustrated database includes a glossary of 27 types, 49 sub-types, and 14 styles, hundreds of designer profiles and site entries, descriptions of some of our country’s most important cultural landscapes, and relevant website links.

Launch Party

The official launch party for the weekend will be held on Thursday, September 9, from 5:30 to 7:30PM at the new 36,000 square foot Room & Board store (1840 14th Street, NW). Room & Board is a presenting sponsor along with Bartlett Tree Experts and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Additional support comes from PNC Bank and Hank’s Oyster Bar. Partners include the National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation. We look forward to you joining us in celebration of D.C.’s cultural landscapes.